Rain poured down from the sky. Thunder rumbled, seemingly directly overhead. Lightning flashed brilliantly across the sky, then was gone, leaving the world in darkness. If it had seemed dark before, now everything was black in the night, except when it was seared with white at the touch of lightning.
The exhausted clone had been dragged miles downriver by the rough current, half-drowned by the churning water. The current, the rain, and the waters made choppy by the fierce wind had all served to destroy his sense of direction, including whether he was up or down. At one point, he'd been trying to find the surface, only to be met with the rocky bottom of the river.
It had been night when he had at last dragged his battered, bruised self from the river. He had then been defeated by the muddy banks. Too dizzy to stand, he'd crawled out on hands and knees, and sunk in wet sand up to his elbows. He'd struggled to free himself, but eventually fallen over on his side and given up. It was after midnight when he finally roused himself enough to take stock of surroundings and self.
Caden had no appreciation for how well the clones had done in the fight. Their coordination and timing had been spot on. He had no feeling of accomplishment at having survived the combat, had no real understanding of how easily every single one of them could have lost their lives if even one individual had mistimed an attack, or accidentally hit one of his brothers instead of the enemy.
He knew only that a shadow from Hell had attacked them, and torn them apart. He knew he had nearly drowned in the water. And too, he knew that he was now alone. It had taken several minutes to cough and clear his throat and lungs enough to call out. Nobody replied. His radio, whose functioning had been sketchy at the best of times, was shorted out by the water. It was resistant to rain, but complete submersion, combined with being pounded on by rocks and debris, had finished it off.
Caden was cold. The river water was freezing, and the howling wind had snatched at his body heat, and now he shivered. Not very effectively. He was too tired to shiver properly. He knew he was in danger of dying on the spot. He had to get out of the wind, and preferably dried off.
The habits and coordination of the unit had worked against Caden when the clones retreated to the water. Most of the clones paired off, keeping close to their partner and helping one another tell up from down, aiding injured clones. But Caden had no partner. Nobody had helped him.
He didn't resent that. Fact was, he wasn't even aware of it. He knew only of his immediate situation. And that was cold, wet, tired and very much alone in unknown territory.
But, aside from bruising, Caden was unhurt. He realized he was lucky to have survived, and fully aware that at least one of his squadmates had not been so lucky. It troubled him in a vague kind of way that he didn't know which one it was, but that was of less import than his immediate situation.
Wearily, he tugged against the sucking mud. It was surprisingly easy to break free. Earlier it had seemed impossible. Dragging himself up to more solid ground, Caden realized with horror that something was missing. In the chaos of the river, he'd lost his blaster rifle. He had a pistol secured in a holster, and still possessed a blade, but the rifle was gone. The horror was not in his own helplessness, he could still defend himself adequately, but in the loss of a valuable piece of hardware.
Caden had been educated that his equipment was more valuable than he was. He was never to misuse it, and losing it was a crime for which there could be no excuse. Still, there was no getting it back.
Caden sighed, and eased himself into a sitting position next to a large bush, which provided some shelter from the wind, if not the rain. He hurt. Literally everything hurt. It wasn't blinding or especially intense, but a steady kind of pain which throbbed all through him. He felt like he'd lost a boxing match.
Worse than that, he knew he'd lost his squad. And he wasn't quite sure how to find them.
Far up river, Onoff was in a similar predicament. Similar, but not exactly the same. He still had his blaster, courtesy of Phisher. Onoff hadn't been sure what happened to Phisher, only that his brother was uncoordinated and apparently didn't know one direction from another.
Via shouting and shoving, Onoff had bullied Phisher into the water, and then been obliged to mostly tow his brother across. Phisher wasn't entirely out of it, and swam willingly in the direction Onoff aimed him, but crashing waves and debris time and again forced them under, and Phisher seemed to have no way of recovering from these disorienting blows.
At last, Onoff had dropped his blaster in favor of hanging onto Phisher. Phisher had caught it when it bumped against him on the way down to the bottom of the river, and held onto it. As he was doing less of the work swimming, he was able to hold onto it as well as his own.
Onoff knew Phisher was hurt, but it wasn't until they'd gotten to the other side, coughed up a lot of water and caught their breath that he was able to try and find out what was wrong. Using the light on his rifle, Onoff looked Phisher over. It wasn't hard to guess what the problem was.
The shine of the light caught the jagged edges of the gashed helmet. At first, Onoff thought Phisher had actually lost an eye, but the cut had barely missed his right eye, cutting a line down Phisher's face from temple to chin. Blood flowed freely from the wound, and blinded Phisher. Additionally, the throbbing pain in his head and the loss of blood seemed to have made him less coherent.
"Damn. That was close," Onoff said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.
"Bad?" Phisher managed to ask through the ringing in his ears and the fog in his brain.
"Nah," Onoff replied, though he really hadn't a clue, "You just sprung a leak is all. Must hurt like blazes though."
"Stings a bit," Phisher admitted.
Talking made the pain in his head worse, though he was too out of it to fully understand why. The open wound itself felt totally numb, but the raw tissue around it felt like it was on fire. Phisher didn't know the extent of his injury, being as he couldn't see his own face, but he didn't like Onoff's tone.
"Better clean that," Onoff decided, "And see if we can plug the leak."
He had a small medkit, though he would have preferred Doc's expertise. But when he reached for Phisher's helmet, Phisher caught his arm in a vise-like grip.
"No!" Phisher snapped, jerking his head away, which proved to be a mistake as it made him dizzy enough that he fell over on his side from the sitting position he'd been in, "Leave it... leave it be."
Onoff cocked his head to one side. Phisher had let go of his arm now, and put a hand against his helmet. A futile gesture. The behavior was odd. Onoff wracked his brain for a cause, and finally found one that he liked. Something about head injuries causing aberrant behavior. Or something like that.
Onoff liked it not so much because that would be a good thing, but more because it kept it from being a mysterious thing. He didn't like mysteries, didn't like it when things didn't make sense. And Phisher's behavior certainly didn't make sense. It was defensive. As though he had something to hide. Or.. or as though he was afraid of something. Of his own brother, the same one that had just risked his own neck to drag Phisher across the river, nearly drowning in the process.
"I'm... I'll be fine," Phisher's attempt at reassurance was feeble, and didn't really do any good.
Onoff ignored him and removed his own helmet, which released a tiny flood of water that had become trapped in it one of the times he'd been dunked under. He shook his head, a futile gesture in the pouring rain, and blinked in the dim light produced by his rifle.
He pointed it away, trying to get a reading on what sort of terrain was around them. It was no good. Visibility was near zero, even with the light. Even so, he made the same decision Caden had. Move away from the rising water, go inland and search for some manner of shelter.
"Can you walk, or do I have to carry you?" He asked Phisher.
It was funny, he thought, how one day you could feel like you were slow roasting beneath the sun, and the next shivering from the cold of the river. There was also shock to consider.
Shock was something clones didn't respond to very well. To them, it seemed like a physical result brought on by a mental condition. They readily understood physical injury and impairment, but any response brought on from the mind was a sign of weakness, which was something they had little tolerance for. When a clone went into shock, his brothers would typically mill around, not sure what to do or how to react. Or, if they had developed no affection for him, they might even attack.
Not that they would try to kill their brethren, but they would nudge him, push him, and maybe cuff him on the head, along with insults, to try and elicit a normal defensive response. Sometimes they even left such clones behind, unable to understand or alter the condition.
People are naturally inclined to do such things. They are uncomfortable around strange behavior, and may attempt to relieve their discomfort by lashing out. But, yet again, training played its own part as well. The clones knew no softness, no gentleness, and no mercy. Not by raising. Some of them learned it, but it was not innate and seldom taught.
Onoff had the experience to know that shock was a very real possibility for both himself and for Phisher. And that knowledge was concerning. It told him that they were vulnerable, and weak.
Onoff looked around again. He could see nothing, but that meant little. He couldn't hear anything that sounded dangerous, but the storm rendered him deaf to the faint noises a stalking hunter might have made. And it did not even occur to him to try and use his sense of smell, which he had been told wasn't really worth anything. He didn't know that it wasn't strictly true. But one had to learn to use the sense of smell, and Onoff had never been given occasion to do so.
Of all the clones in Fortune Actual, Onoff was the most likely to take things in his stride.
Having determined that he understood the situation as best he was able, Onoff shook himself and set about taking a course of action. Normally, Phisher was the leader of the pair, deciding when and where they would hunt, and what it was they were hunting. He picked out the individual prey from the herd, and then Onoff flung himself into attempting to "make it happen".
More than once, Phisher's attack had stampeded a herd right towards Onoff's position. Onoff didn't try to get out of the way, but often stood to make his shot. When he broke from cover, the frightened animals would see him and bolt the other way. Standing his ground was something Onoff did very well. But he also had another tactic. Sometimes the prey would escape from the net. With only two clones, it was very difficult to surround animals, especially with the factor of wind direction playing a part.
Several times, Onoff had actually run diagonally to the fleeing herd, getting around in front of them, forcing them to turn to avoid him or to run into firing range. Onoff's quickness and focus had saved the hunt many times over. But most essential was his lack of fear. He would not back away from a stampede, and would even run towards them or sometimes among them.
His failing, at least in Phisher's opinion, was his single-mindedness. If Phisher told him to target one animal, he would pursue it to the exclusion of all others, even if they ran right up to him.
This was a trait brought on not from training, but from his predatory ancestry. Not so long ago, the species he was cloned from had been fierce hunters. Before they had effective weapons, they had to run down their prey. They couldn't stop or turn on a dime, and so couldn't take advantage of prey other than the one they were targeting. If they got distracted by an animal leaping alongside them, they could trip and break a bone, or else lose the target they were going after.
By nature's standards, Onoff was well equipped for the predatory lifestyle. He was an opportunist, and considered his options before taking action. But once set on a course, there was nothing that could distract or dissuade him from it. It made him a bad clone. On the field of battle, orders could change in an instant. But Onoff would pursue a set mission until it was complete, ignoring any and all other input. If you sent him to attack, there would be no calling him back.
It was not disobedience in the truest sense, he didn't make a core decision not to follow orders. In fact, Onoff was always eager to hear commands and to carry them out with almost doggish enthusiasm. He just didn't switch gears very well. His name might have come from his being "one of five", which had been abbreviated and then later mispronounced, but it suited him well for another reason. Phisher had made the joke that he had two settings: On and Off.
Now, he had lit on an idea, and that was to get away from the water.
And it was a good thing. Even though the rain had just started here specifically, it had been pouring in buckets from the sky for days. The ground was bloated with rain, and the river was swelling up and out now because the water had nowhere else to go. Had the clones remained where they were for the night, they would have been caught up in, and swept away by, a flash flood.
Phisher pushed off attempts to help him get up, insisting that he could walk on his own. But, five minutes later, his pride lost to his good sense, and he leaned against Onoff for support and guidance through the dark. Onoff didn't mind. He knew how embarrassing it was to be weak, you could feel ashamed even if it was not your fault, as this was not Phisher's.
Onoff knew Phisher better than to think he was weak.
The patience it took to ambush prey took a lot more than most people would imagine. Having to sit absolutely still, absolutely silent, sometimes for hours, with only the vaguest hope that your prey would come to the place you predicted so that you could have a shot at hunting them was trying.
And there was something, some instinct or inner sense that was crucial to the timing of the hunt. Some way of knowing without being able to see that the time was right to strike. Onoff didn't have that sense, and so waited for Phisher's cue. Phisher seemed to sense when prey was paying the least attention.
That sense made the difference between success and failure.
And, out here, that was the difference between life and death.